Horror Film Aesthetics

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

One of the biggest expenses for many
low-budget films is renting an appropriate location. Actors and crew
will often work for deferred pay, or even no pay, and there are
plenty of both to choose from. But appropriate locations --
especially on the cheap -- are harder to secure.

Money can be saved on location rentals (and their permit fees and insurance coverage) by reusing the same location for
different locales (i.e., pretending that the same place
is really someplace different). Even cheaper and easier if you can
reuse the same location without changing any of its set décor.

(By location, I mean where a scene is filmed. By locale, I mean the place the location represents. For instance, a scene that is filmed in
Toronto (the location) might represent an event occurring New York City (the locale.))

In the short, comedic horror film,
Psychic Sue, Jennifer (Kate Finegan) visits Sue (Andrea Coyne)
for a reading. Sue's psychic shop is stereotypical of such
places -- red curtains, candles, occult knick-knacks. Sue spouts the
usual spiritual gobbledygook. Rather than demanding anything so crass
as money, Sue instead asks Jennifer to "cross my palm with
silver." She also claims that her candles are "forged by the
monks of Tibet."

Obviously, director Dave Lojek used the same room and set décor. He didn't even bother to vary the curtains and knick-knacks. Yet events make it clear that this location represents two different locales -- Sue's shop and Zoe's shop.

This dual use of the same location and set décor serves two purposes. Pragmatically, it saves money. Aesthetically, it provides humor. Monty Python often used the same sets (with only cursory changes in décor) for comedic effect, the characters pretending not to notice.

Well, sometimes one character -- usually the put-upon protagonist -- does a quick glance-about, noticing the striking similarities, before shrugging it off. Sue does likewise in Zoe's shop.

Psychic Sue's script reinforces the comedic effect of using identical rooms for different shops. For instance, Zoe spouts nearly identical nonsense to that of Sue. Zoe asks Sue to "cross my palm with silver" and extolls her candles as being "forged by the monks of Tibet."

By using the same location and décor for different locales, Lojek saved money. But what makes his reuse of locations especially admirable is that he put his financial corner-cutting to aesthetic use (e.g., heightening the humor).

Psychic Sue's duel use of the same location is an example of what I call pragmatic aesthetics -- when a filmmakers puts a budgetary compromise to aesthetic use.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Sometimes less
is more. A threat might be more frightening if unseen and left to our imagination. For instance, the entity in The Haunting, slowing pressing in the heavy wooden door as the
terrified characters watch from its other side. We never did learn
what lurked behind that door.

But sometimes
"less is more" is just a filmmaker's excuse
to show less (fewer sets, locations, actors, or special effects)
because he could not afford to show more. The film needed to show more (nothing was aesthetically gained by its
showing less), but more was not in the budget.

And sometimes
these two motivations for showing less -- aesthetic and financial --
conjoin in a mutually supportive manner.

In The First
Step, a cellar dweller creeps up from a basement, up three
flights of stairs, to kill a little girl. This is a short, low-budget ($500) film. As such, the cellar dweller's makeup effect (by Delia De Cock) is admirably original and effective, but upon close examination, it looks like makeup.

This means that, should audiences get an opportunity to closely examine the makeup, it will be that much harder for them to suspend their disbelief and enjoy the horror.

The First Step solves
this problem by obscuring the cellar dweller with dim lighting
(such that the creature is often seen in silhouettes) ...

... and a soft
focus (thus blurring the edges of the makeup application, so that
the creature's twisted features appear natural).

Framing also
helps obscure the monster, often showing us only its body parts (e.g., a
foot, a clawed hand, etc.).

I don't know if
this was the filmmakers' (Daniel Brown and Kate McMeans) intent behind their lighting,
photography, and framing, but that's the aesthetic effect. If you were to pause the film and scrutinize the creature, then its feature will more clearly be seen as artificial makeup, rather than actual monster skin. But when seen only briefly in quick cuts, and under dim
lighting, and through a slight blur, then the creature's artificiality is less obvious.

By obscuring the
cellar dweller, more is left to the viewer's imagination. This imagination is further stimulated by the monster's creepy voice and disjointed
body movements, (actress Jon Anna Van Thuyne), both of which suggest all manner of horrors.

To recap:

The First Step's low-budget yields some fairly nice monster makeup effects, but these effects
are obviously artificial should viewers closely examine them. To prevent such close examination of the makeup, the filmmaker employs...

* Dim lighting
(creating silhouettes),

* Soft focus
(blurring the image),

* Tight framing
(showing only parts of the monster),

* Quick cuts
(further preventing close examination of the creature).

This leaves the creature's nature up to our dark imaginings, which are further stimulated by ...

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

There is no such
thing as horror acting. There are horror actors (e.g.,
Bela Lugosi, Peter Cushing, Jamie Lee Curtis), but only in the sense
that the actor becomes known for working in many horror films. But
there is no horror acting style. Yes, scream queens will
scream, but their screaming is more often a form of performing
rather than acting.

Performing is a
broad term that encompasses (among other pursuits) dancing, singing,
poetry readings, standup comedy, acting, and screaming in a
Halloween haunted house attraction.

True acting, as
taught by teachers of The Method, involves creating a
character with an authentic, emotional inner life. Real
emotions that actors project through their instruments that's what Method teachers call an actor's entire being (including
his face, body, thoughts, and emotions).

Method actors
emote through their instruments.

Most of the past
decade's hundreds of micro-budget, indie horror films fail in one or
more areas. Flat lighting, crude sound, and poorly motivated characters are prevalent. But the most common defect among
micro-budgeted indie horror films is the quality of the acting.

Some beginner actors mistakenly think that acting is largely about
creating facial expressions. (Someone even self-published a book about
it.) But if the actor does not project an inner emotional life, then
the facial expression will appear false. External and artificial,
rather than internal and authentic.

You've likely fooled around with friends, when one of you pretended to be sad, angry, or scared, maybe by mugging a facial expression. Surely everyone could see that the person was merely playacting, rather than actually being sad, angry, or scared.

Conversely, there
were likely times when you sensed that your friend was sad, angry, or
scared, even if they tried to hide such emotions behind a happy face. Their true emotions were breaking through the surface -- a far more powerful and convincing thing to see than a fake expression.

Great acting is not
about artificial facial expressions, but about generating and projecting
real emotions.

A scene in
Clockwatchers (1997) demonstrates an acting fallacy committed
by poor actors (and poor directors). Lisa Kudrow plays an office temp (Paula) with dreams of becoming an
actress. While riding home a bus, Paula shows a co-worker all the
great faces she's learned at acting class. This scene is meant to
satirize poor Paula, who (unlike Kudrow) is a terrible actress. Yet
this scene also illustrates one of the hallmarks of bad acting.

While
Paula's "acting" is as good as that in many low-budget
horror films, it falls short of great acting. (Her happy face appears the most authentic. This is
likely because Paula herself is in an upbeat mood as
she showcases her faces to her co-worker, so her happy face has authentic emotions behind it.)

However, to really "get" the above scene, one must view the actual film. Film students should watch Clockwatchers in any event, as it is one of the best indie films of the 1990s. A satire of office cubicle workers, it has authentic acting and dialog, and is subtler, more powerful, more poignant, and more true-to-life than the similarly themed Office Space.

Students of
acting and directing should also compare Betty's (Naomi Watts) two
performances of the same scene in Mulholland Drive. Betty,
like Paula, is an aspiring actress. Betty first performs the scene at
home, as she practices for her audition. Her performance is pretty
poor. Betty then performs the scene a second time at the audition.
This time her performance is so extraordinary.

This instructive
scene from Mulholland Drive not only demonstrates great
acting as opposed to poor acting, but it also shows that the same
scene, when played with different emotions, yields startlingly different
results.

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Wide-angle lenses expand space. If the lens's angle is wide enough, it even noticeably distorts space. Horror films have found many applications, both aesthetic and pragmatic, for wide-angle lenses. Among its uses, a wide-angle lens can...

* Photograph everthing in small rooms or tight spaces (low-budget films can rarely afford to
rent a professional studio in which the camera has enough space to pull back to photograph a scene).

* Expand space so as to
suggest a larger setting. (Realtors also use wide-angles lenses for
this purpose -- ever notice that houses, lawns, and backyards often
look bigger in their Zillow photos than they do at Open House?)

But especially admirable
is when a filmmaker achieves more than one aesthetic effect from a wide-angle lens. Such an application may be referred to as
being aesthetically efficient.

It is because of its
aesthetic efficiency that I admire this shot from "The Concrete
Captain," an episode from TV's Ghost Story/Circle of Fear.

In the above scene, a
ghost possesses Gene Rowlands, compelling her to come out to the
beach. Her husband, played by Stuart Whitman, catches up and tries to bring Rowlands back to the motel. They struggle at the top of some stairs.

* Second, the lens' expansion of space makes the stairs appear that
much higher above the ground. This makes the consequences of falling down those stairs appear that much more dire, thus heightening viewers' tension as they watch Rowlands and Whitman struggle.

Sunday, July 6, 2014

One of the film director's jobs is to stage the actors -- to instruct them on where to sit or stand, where to look, when to notice each other, etc.

Staging is a fine art, the search for a delicate balance. It's rarely a good idea to over-direct the actors, directing their every smile, frown, head tilt, eyebrow lift, shift in tone of voice. Then the actors feel like constrained marionettes, denied the freedom to "find their character."

But neither is it a good idea to just dump the actors on set, and leave them milling about, without any instruction or direction. This is especially true if one is working with amateur actors, because they lack the training to behave appropriately without direction.

Evidence of a Haunting, yet another fictitious horror film about "true-life TV ghosthunters," provides an instructive example of inept staging.

In this scene, our team of ghosthunters go to their next investigation, a haunted suburban house. We see our ghosthunters outside the house, approaching the front door...

We then cut to this (above) shot of a father and his two daughters, standing like mannequins in the hallway, doing nothing very much. Apparently the director placed them in the hall, because soon the doorbell will ring, so they must be prepared to open the door.

HUH?

How does this family know the ghosthunters are soon to ring the bell? Were they standing in the hall for the past several hours, just waiting for the doorbell to ring?

I also love how the father has his eyes closed, the older daughter slouches while smirking and staring at nothing much, and the younger daughter looks bored.

Well, of course she's bored. You'd be bored too if you spent your evenings standing in a hallway waiting for someone who is expected to arrive sometime over the next several hours.

As for the older daughter, I suppose she's smirking because she's so excited to be in a movie. It's anyone's guess why the father fell asleep.

DING-DONG!

Now the doorbell rings, bringing the father and older daughter to life. The younger daughter is a little late to react.

Perhaps this shot is taking a long time to finish. Young children bore easily. Amateur child actors are no exception to this rule.

Even so, the younger daughter comes alive in time to lean in unison with her family, as everyone prepares to see who's out there. The family that leans together stays together.

Captions now also provide their names, identifying them as our ghosthunters' clients.

And our ghosthunters are outside! They enter and everyone exchanges the usual banal pleasantries.

This shot is poorly staged, poorly directed, and poorly edited.

* A better alternative is for the actors to have been staged off-camera, as if they were busy living their lives elsewhere in the house. They should have entered the hallway only after the doorbell rings.

* Even better if only one of them enters the hall to open the door. Otherwise it's a light bulb joke. How many clients do you need to open a door? Three. One to turn the knob and two to lean over and watch.

* Another alternative would have been to delete this shot entirely. Why not just cut to an exterior shot of the house, followed by our ghosthunters already interviewing the clients inside the house. It would have quickened the pace. As it is, this shot is not only poorly staged, it is superfluous, in that it doesn't add anything necessary to the film.

* At the very least the director should have trimmed this shot so that we don't see the family waiting in the hall, the father asleep. Perhaps the actor was only resting his eyes, or blinking. It's a brief moment. Even so, the director should have caught it in the editing room and trimmed the shot. The film's editor also bears blame.

Evidence of a Haunting has many problems. This shot is just a sample. The film is poorly written, ineptly staged, and performed by a cast of amateur wannabe-actors. But I can forgive bland dialog and amateurish acting if a film is entertaining. Evidence of a Haunting is not. It's boring.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

A long-running debate in
horror film criticism is the merits of explicit vs. implied threats.
Which packs the greater emotional punch? To see gore in all its graphic
detail, or to leave such horrors to our imagination?

The Kiss (1988)
provides an excellent example of the power of implied gore, in a scene that is set at a department store. The scene comprises 39 shots, running a total of 1 minute, 19 seconds.

The scene opens with three closeup shots of escalator
stairs, from different angles.

As they rise with the stairs, Heather realizes that she's
dropped her lipstick. She returns to the bottom of the stairs to
retrieve it. As she reaches for it, her necklace is caught by the
escalators.

Naturally, Heather is unable
either to extract the necklace from the stairs, or to remove the
necklace from around her neck.

There follows an
increasingly tense series of shots. Heather rising with the stairs.
Amy looking on in horror, screaming for help, unable to help Heather.

Amy's boyfriend, Terry (Shawn Levy), who
works at the store, hears Amy. He rushes to the escalator.
He kicks the Emergency Stop button, but to no avail. The escalator
won't stop.

As the scene progresses
editing heightens our sense of panic through brief, quick
cuts of the same few shots -- Terry's frantic kicks, Amy's horrified
gaze, the moving escalator stairs -- and Heather's screaming face, the
necklace wrapped ever more tightly across it.

Viewers, morbidly
tantalized, fearfully anticipate what will happen to Heather's face
when she reaches the top of the escalator. But when Heather does
arrive, the penultimate shot of is Amy's
horrified gaze -- then a final shot of the escalator stairs, still running smoothly as blood, hair strands, and necklace bits collect at the top.

What happened to Heather
is left to our imagination. Instead, we cut to a scene
of a distraught Amy arriving home. We learn that Heather is in the
hospital, "badly cut up."

We never see or hear of Heather again. Her face -- or what's left of it -- is forever left to our
imagination.

This scene's dramatic setup and editing do much
to build audience tension. So much so that our minds filled in the
blanks as to what occurred to Heather's face.

Some filmmakers would feel the need to
push the envelop and show the flesh tearing off from Heather's face, perhaps in slow motion. Some
films have indeed shown humans being skinned alive (e.g., Dagon). Yet The Kiss's
handling of this scene is also extremely effective in instilling suspense
and horror.

The Kiss is an excellent supernatural
tale of African witchcraft. It is currently out-of-print as a DVD,
but you can see it on YouTube:

Monday, March 17, 2014

Sometimes a filmmaker can't achieve something on screen because of a low budget
-- but sometimes it's due to laziness and a lack of
artistic commitment. It would have been just as cheap to shoot a
scene correctly, but the filmmaker -- or the actor -- couldn't be
bothered.

Hair styles are
one example. Hair cuts and shaves are cheap. I've complained before
about low-budget films that feature soldiers
with beards,goatees, and ponytails. Edge, a low-budget
film about a serial killer, makes the same mistake with its portrayal
of uniformed police officers.

This cop from
Edge (above) has a full beard.

And here's a cop
(above) with a Mohawk. Not an undercover cop, mind you, but a
uniformed officer.

Maybe this Mohawk is an "in joke" -- one of the film's producers is "Mohawk Lighting Productions." If that is the intent, filmmaker Jacob Whitley should at least be aware that his joke comes at the cost of detracting from the film.

How so?

It concerns suspension of disbelief. The lower a
film's budget -- the cheaper its sets, props, costumes, the sparser its cast -- the
more difficult for viewers to suspend disbelief, and the more likely the film becomes Mystery Science Theater 3000 fodder. This is why low-budget
filmmakers should do everything within their skills set and budget to achieve verisimilitude -- a sense of reality -- on screen.

Remarkably, Edge's end credits list four actual cops -- two "tactical
advisors" (sic) and two "location assistants." (Their ranks are one officer, two sergeants, one captain.) True, these cops weren't part of the hair &
makeup crew, but you'd think one of them would have mentioned
something about the police characters' beard and Mohawk.

Edge's credits indicate the film was shot in La Palma, California.
Is this how real cops groom themselves in La Palma? Even if that were so, Whitley should have known that such grooming is outside the norm, so his film would have greater verisimilitude with clean-shaven
officers.

Edge's detectives have five o'clock shadows, but one can be more forgiving
of that. Detectives are more often portrayed as casual in dress and grooming than are
uniformed officers, so audiences are more likely to accept that.

But Edge has some
other faults that break viewers' suspension of disbelief. In one
scene, police officers storm into a house. They find a dead man, his
throat slashed. Detective Rivers (Scott Butler) finds a knife in a sink
filled with bloody water.

So Detective
Rivers reaches into the water and picks up the knife.

He stares at the knife in disgust, then tosses it back into the sink.

Huh?!

Even if the
serial killer had tried to wipe the knife of fingerprints, and
wash off his DNA, wouldn't a professional detective have removed the
knife with rubber gloves, then placed it into a plastic baggie, for
further analysis? Instead, Rivers contaminates the knife
with his own prints and DNA. And his partner beside him says nothing,
as though this is normal procedure

I think modern
audiences have been sufficiently sensitized over these past few decades of CSI shows that even lay people know better than to touch anything
at a crime scene with bare hands. Once again, it would have been just
as cheap to have filmed Rivers leaving the knife untouched,
than to break the viewer's suspension of disbelief with his unprofessional behavior

Edge
is not an entirely bad film. It's reasonably entertaining for its
budget. DP David Molina's photography is sharp and his use of blue lights to evoke night nicely done. Although the film is set in
California, Scott Butler has what sounds to me like an Australian or
New Zealander accent (his IMDb page says he's from South London), but one can overlook that.